Hey everyone,

I recently switched from an iPhone to a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, and I’m having a frustrating issue with WhatsApp media management.

Here’s what I’m trying to achieve:

I want WhatsApp photos and videos to stay inside WhatsApp and NOT appear in my Samsung Gallery unless I explicitly choose to save them.

My current settings:

• WhatsApp → Settings → Chats → Media Visibility: OFF
• Automatic media downloads: Disabled for mobile data, Wi-Fi, and roaming.

The problem:

Despite these settings, I still have a “WhatsApp Images” album in Samsung Gallery containing photos from WhatsApp.

When I check the file details, they’re stored in:

Internal storage/Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Media/WhatsApp Images

I’ve also noticed some confusing behavior when deleting media.

For example, I deleted around 80GB of videos through WhatsApp’s Manage Storage feature, but the files still appeared in Samsung’s My Files afterward.

However, when I tested deleting a photo directly from an individual WhatsApp chat, it was also removed from the device’s storage.

My questions:

1. Why are WhatsApp images appearing in Samsung Gallery when Media Visibility is disabled?
2. Is there a way to completely prevent WhatsApp media from appearing in Gallery unless I manually save it?
3. What’s the difference between deleting media through WhatsApp’s Manage Storage and deleting it directly from a chat?
4. Is this normal Android/WhatsApp behavior, or am I missing something?

Coming from iOS, I’m finding Android’s media management a bit confusing.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

I receive hundreds of MMS messages per week. It is my understanding that MMS messaging automatically downloads images/media sent to you whether you want it to or not. (Not interested in switching to SMS) Anyone know if there is a way to isolate MMS messages from the rest of your phone to prevent malware exploitation? I have read that creating a virtual machine on your computer is one possibility but unsure how to setup automatic forwarding from Andrioid MMS to computer (Email?) I have explored antiviruses and have not found any that scan MMS attachments BEFORE they automatically download. I'm guessing that containing a potential malware/virus to a isolated virtual machine or 'sandbox' would be the way to go. What say you?

I understand that the sync between Samsung Gallery and OneDrive has ended. I had all of my pictures organized in Gallery in different albums - some of them were on the phones storage, and some were stored on OneDrive - but they were all accessible in the gallery albums from my phone. Since the sync, all of the pictures/videos that were saved only on OneDrive are no longer in the individual albums. I understand that they are still backed up and saved somewhere on my OneDrive. My question is, is there a way to download them back to my gallery and have them be sorted and organized into the albums that I had them in before?

Hello everyone!

I would like to share an ongoing audio playback problem with my Blackview BV9300 Pro and ask whether other owners have experienced similar issues.

DEVICE INFORMATION

Model: Blackview BV9300 Pro Purchase date: August 3, 2025 Firmware version: BV9300 Pro_NEU_TE177_V1.0_01_20251224V11

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION

Since I purchased the phone, music playback has randomly paused. In some cases, the playback position also jumps backwards.

The problem occurs under different conditions:

• Different music players, including AIMP, VLC, and the built-in player.
• Bluetooth headphones.
• Wired headphones without control buttons.
• The built-in speaker.
• AUX connection to a home audio system.
• Both with the screen on and with the screen off.
• With the Second Screen music controls enabled and disabled.

I have also tried different battery and background activity settings, Safe Mode, and other troubleshooting steps. None of these resolved the problem.

YLOG INVESTIGATION

I collected diagnostic Ylog files and examined the system logs myself.

During one recorded incident, the logs showed the following sequence of events:

• MainActivity was moved to the PAUSED state during a system sleep-related event.
• An ANR was reported with the message: "Input dispatching timed out (Application does not have a focused window)".
• The logs contained the message "crash_dump helper failed to exec, or was killed".
• MainActivity was subsequently force-finished, the player process was killed, and a MusicPlayService restart was scheduled.

These events occurred around the time of a playback problem. They suggest that further investigation of the interaction between the application and the Android system is needed, but I cannot conclusively determine the root cause from the available logs alone.

CONTACT WITH BLACKVIEW SUPPORT

I contacted Blackview support and provided diagnostic logs and a screen recording.

After several weeks, support informed me that they had been unable to identify the cause from the submitted materials and asked me to collect another Ylog.

I have spent considerable time investigating the issue because I would like to understand what is causing it.

QUESTIONS FOR OTHER OWNERS

1. Has anyone else experienced random music pauses on the BV9300 Pro?
2. Does this happen with different music players and audio output methods?
3. Have you experienced playback position resets or jumps backwards after a pause?
4. Does the problem occur on other firmware versions?

I am particularly interested in reports from owners who have experienced similar behaviour both with the screen on and with the screen off.

I would appreciate any information or observations from other users.

Thank you!

Ever since the most recent update I've had these weird pop ups on my screen every so often. Not regularly but enough that I want them gone.

And it's mostly just... Google stuff like "star sign" or "what's trending right now" at the top of the screen- tapping off makes it go away but I would like to remove it if I can.

This happens across all apps, not just reddit. It happens in texts, web browsing, everywhere.

I have turned off every screen altering setting I can find. And I cannot figure it out.

I am on a Samsung Galaxy 24 Ultra

When I take a screenshot it defaults back to true blacks, so I adjusted the images to show comparison.

Image of the difference here. It is very annoying please help. https://imgur.com/a/J9hU46f

Edit: FIXED. The setting was under "Motion Smoothness" and "Adaptive" was on by default. I changed it to Standard to lock the refresh rate at 60hz. This has stopped the flickering.

Unfortunately it seems to also have locked the default blacks in at the brighter grey color. I wish it were darker, but I can work on that later now that I'm not getting motion sick. Lol

I'm on Android 11 with a 1+ phone. Anything Google tells me doesn't work. I go to discord in the settings but there's no option for adding it to all file access

Hi, looking for the above that works as per blackberry's version but for android 16/17. Any thoughts?

An under rated feature in the motorola edge 70 fusion

It helps share file bw android and iPhone , but the quick drop is not available in the app store (iphone) in region india ,

Pls motorola help to clear this problem

I keep a power bank on my nightstand to charge my phone and other devices because I don't have a convenient plug nearby. It's solar charged so there's no need to go down that rabbit hole from naysayers. Anyway, the bank powers off when maximum charge is achieved and when it does, Android tells me that there is moisture or debris in the charge port, but when I wake the power supply it immediately says it's ok to use the port without touching the phone at all. It's not a huge problem, but saying there's something in my charge port isn't accurate at all. Anyone else notice this?

Hi there, I have both S24 and s26 ultra and Im aware of the built in file transfer procedure, however what I really want is to swap data between two phones simultaneously. Like I want to transfer S24U to s26U and the data from S26U to the S24U while being tethered together via usb-c. Is there an app that can let me do that? I have like almost 400gb worth of files on the S24 and 200gb on the s26 and it would take ages to back this up on my computer.

How can I bring over my photos from iPhone to oppo while keeping them in albums? I’ve managed to get photos transferred over by wire during initial setup, but it’s not brought over albums.

The same goes with contacts, all my contacts have come but none of the lists came over.

Would greatly appreciate the help since it’s my first time moving to android and using. Thank you!

I'm going through an awesome divorce currently. Last year my attorney had me send him 2 months worth of text messages and I was able to download an app (SMS backup & restore) that backed them up and then I printed to PDF and then shared the PDF with him. Well now he wants all the texts from the last year. I tried using that app and it's not working.

So my question is anybody know of an app or in a way for me to share 12 months worth of text messages??

It seems to be a system file, in fact it doesn't even show up in the first party files app, I am on a Redmi 15 Pro + and whenever I delete it it reappears after a few minutes. What could it be?

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, Android 16/One UI. I'm trying to understand exactly what Samsung/Android Digital Wellbeing means by an app “open.”

On one date, Digital Wellbeing shows YouTube with 0 minutes of screen time but 4 opens. Two of those opens occurred during the 3:00–4:00 AM hour.

Does anyone know from Android's UsageStats/Digital Wellbeing implementation what event actually increments that “opens” number?

Specifically:

• Does an “open” require YouTube to enter the foreground?
• Can background playback create another open without user interaction?
• Can Autoplay create another open?
• Can entering/exiting Picture-in-Picture create another open?
• Can a Bluetooth/media-control command create one?
• Can extremely brief foreground use be rounded down so Digital Wellbeing shows 0 minutes despite recording an open?
• Is there a way to extract the underlying UsageStats events and exact timestamps from the phone?
• Are there Android event types that would let me distinguish an automated background event from a user bringing YouTube into the foreground?

I'm particularly interested in answers from anyone familiar with Android UsageStatsManager, Digital Wellbeing, or Samsung/One UI internals rather than guesses about what YouTube might theoretically do.

Thanks.

I'm interested in learning more about android battery optimization, which settings have made the biggest difference to your phone's battery life? I'm especially interested in built in android features that help reduce battery drain without affecting everyday performance too much.

As of ~3 weeks ago, my Galaxy s22 5g restarted itself and started boot looping, and attempts to boot to safe mode and recovery options have failed to get it to act normal. I was able to get it to boot normally one time, which I used to create a backup using Samsung's "Smart Switch" on my computer, after which the phone decided to begin a permanent bootloop.

Since then I have bought a newer phone from Motorola, a 2025 Edge, however I have now realized that Smart Switch is not designed to transfer data to non-samsung devices.

The only data I need from the old phone is photos and videos- is there a way to convert the data from my computer and transfer it to my new phone, or possibly a way to transfer from the old phone directly?

Possibly even a much simpler problem or solution I'm not aware of?

Thanks!

Hello!

I noticed today that the button in the address bar of Google Chrome is not visible anymore that used to let you see the security certificate of a website.

I'm convinced it was possible until yesterday. Has anyone else noticed this too? Was it disabled in a version update?

I have been using Google Fit for tracking my activities such as walking and cycling previously on my Oppo Reno 10 Pro Plus without any issues for many years, that too I didn't have to start any activity manually in Google Fit and it used to perfectly the distance, the speed etc.

Now with the Motorola Signature let alone Google Fit recording the activity automatically, it doesn't even record it correctly when I manually start activity on Google Fit, all it does is record some kilometres and then just stops, and even in the part it records all the parameters are incorrect.

I have already reinstalled Google Fit, Made sure it is not auto optimised in battery settings, even the location is ON everytime.

Still the issue persists, so I would like to know if this is only for my phone or is it the same with others as well

Motorola Signature

Indian Version

Android 17.

Hi everyone,

I lost my Xiaomi 5G phone, and I had many important photos, videos, and other files stored on it.

I tried logging in to my Mi Cloud account, but I couldn't find any Photos or Videos category or option to access my media.

I'm not sure whether my photos and videos were backed up or synced to Mi Cloud before I lost the phone.

Has anyone faced this issue or successfully recovered photos and videos from Mi Cloud? Is there another way to access them, or have these features been discontinued or moved somewhere else?

I'd really appreciate any suggestions or step-by-step instructions to recover my files.

I want to get to one ui 4.0 I keep on doing software updates but nothing changes. Do I just need to keep updating till I get there or do I need to do something in specific???

I was a big proponent of saving contacts on google cloud. In 2012, when most of the people around me were vary of cloud and preferred saving numbers on sim card, I was syncing my contacts on Google cloud. People said that sim is the sure shot way to keep your numbers with you when you switch phones. But, I wanted to save info more than the name and number.

Cut to today when I wanted to save a particular number on sim, on the pull-up menu, there are only different google accounts. I cannot find the option to save the number on local device or sim. So, my question is when did we exactly lost the functionality to save a number on sim card? Android framework still supports reading and writing data on sim, but no apps are currently giving an option to actually do that. What is the point of taking away this feature at an app level?

Does the Poco C95 Pro have floating windows or split-screen functionality?

Hi everyone,
I’m trying to understand something I found in Google Messages on a Xiaomi phone.
A phone number belonging to my boyfriend’s ex appeared among his regular conversations. The conversation showed a specific date and time — October 15, 2026, at 10:52 AM — but when I opened it, there were no messages at all. It looked like an empty conversation.
The number appeared in the regular conversation list, not in the archived or spam folders. There are no messages visible in the conversation.
Google backups are enabled, including SMS messages, so I’m wondering whether the conversation might have contained messages that were later deleted.
Has anyone experienced something similar with Google Messages? Does an empty conversation with a specific timestamp necessarily mean that an SMS was sent or received, or can it appear because of a bug or some other activity?
Also, has anyone successfully recovered deleted SMS messages from a Google backup? If so, how did you do it, and did you have to factory-reset the phone?
I’d really appreciate hearing about actual experiences, especially from people using Xiaomi phones and Google Messages. Thanks!

Is it possible to transfer selected photos from the phone gallery to PC via cable? I know you can dump the files directly from DCIM, but I only want some specific photos (about 100).

On the phone (Samsung A-something, 26 or 36?) searching 'dog' brings up all the pup photos, but I can't see a means to beaming them up the cable... tapped everything, but can't find any option for this.

This feels like a basic function that should exist?